Two Geico Insurance billboards in Memphis at Interstate 40 eastbound near Watkins and I-40 west just north of Levee Road were defaced with “defund the police” messages Monday night.
The Geico billboards were altered from “Geico, see all the ways you could save” to read “Defund the Police, see all the lives you could save.”
The group responsible for the defacement of the billboards is called INDECLINE. In an email sent to WREG, the group says it took to the highways of Memphis to alter the message of two Geico insurance billboards with a call to defund police. INDECLINE says it believes the reduction of the role that police play in our daily lives would benefit their safety.
According to its website, INDECLINE defines itself as “an Activist Art Collective founded in 2001 comprised of graffiti writers, filmmakers, photographers and full-time rebels and activists. INDECLINE focuses on social, ecological and economical injustices carried out by American and International governments, corporations and law enforcement agencies.”
Memphis Police Association (MPA) Steward and Memphis Police Department (MPD) Officer John Covington responded to the act, saying, “They’re entitled to that opinion, but that’s not where we are realistically as far as the crime that we’re fighting here in Memphis and, obviously, police are a big part of that fight.”
Covington continued, “We’ve had a lot of those discussions over the last year and they’ve been productive. We’ve made changes and some folks on the different side came to some conclusions, too. We created some real bridges.”
The group, INDECLINE, recently made headlines in Mississippi for vandalizing a billboard with pro-abortion messages and hanging a “God Bless Abortions” banner on Christ of the Ozarks monument in Arkansas.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]
Photo “INDECLINE billboard” by INDECLINE.
We need to REVAMP our nation’s police forces to make them accountable to both lower- and middle-income people, and not just to rich, powerful rightwingers. This means changing training to abolish racist and sexist stereotypes on whether a police officer should use force or not; conducting a Congressional racketeering investigation of the F.O.P. (Fraternal/Sororal Order of Police) to root out thugs and racists from the union and to allow democratically selected union officials to represent police; have independent oversight to make sure that police do not abuse their powers or coerce fellow police into doing wrongful actions. If we cannot eliminate the police, the very least we can do is to POLICE the police to make them answerable to ALL of us!
I got news for them, God DOES NOT BLESS Abortions!